This competition marked a milestone for Team SPORK, which was the first time being a captain of a playoff team. Team SPORK ended up being the number 6 seed, after being ranked ninth and moving up through the selection process. Our alliance consisted of Team 279-Tech Fusion and 5492- Winner’s Circle Robo Jockeys. Working together with our alliance members, we put up a tough battle against the number 4 seeded alliance. As a whole, our team competed and performed much better at this regional than North Carolina. We perfected our strategies for the game, how we scout other teams, and our use of Tableau for strategy.

Our team had a great season this year, and we look forward to next year’s challenge as well as other team’s designs to tackle the game. We are taking this year to look at other’s designs, and improve on how our design process will change for next year and in the years to come.

Team SPORK’s hard work and preparation paid off at the North Carolina Regional. We were able to make it to the semifinals on Friday afternoon after being selected for the third alliance with 1533 Triple Strange and 5511 Cortechs Robotics. It is a first in the history of our team that we have gone all the way to the semi-finals. Our drive team and robot performed outstanding throughout the whole competition. Our strategy and scout team did an amazing job watching matches, talking to teams, and building relationships with other teams. They used a new software for scouting and strategy called FRC Scout along with Tableau. We recommend this software to teams, it works very well and gave us get plenty of information about other robots and teams.

For the third time, SPORK won the Imagery Award in honor of Jack Kamen for having outstanding attractiveness in engineering, visual aesthetic, integration of machine, and team appearance. Mrs Moloney was our Woodie Flowers Award nominee for leading, inspiring, teaching, and empowering the team using excellent communication skills. Our Co-Captain Nate Turk, a junior, went on to become a Dean’s List Award finalist. He won this prestigious award for exemplifying exceptional student leadership skills, with passion effectiveness at attaining FIRST ideals. Nate will be attending the Championship Competition in St Louis, Missouri from April 22 to 25. We were also awarded with a Team Spirit Award from Team 587 Hedgehog Robotics, for having outstanding team spirit throughout the competition.

Everyone is looking forward to our next competition, the Smoky Mountain Regional in Knoxville, Tennessee.